The Big Gold Dream

22

Grave Digger turned off the lights before turning the corner and cut off the motor before reaching the entrance. The car coasted to a stop in front of the entrance to the tenement on 118th Street.

"Let's just hope we're right," he said.

They got from the car fast, but with a minimum of sound, and approached the door like grim reapers.

"Pssst!" the big fat black window-watcher called to them.

She looked as though she hadn't left her post. In the shadow she resembled a melted lump of wax.

"If you looking for her, she ain't come back," she said.

Grave Digger felt his heart sink. Coffin Ed grunted as though he had been punched in the stomach. But neither of them hesitated.

The entrance door was closed. Grave Digger gripped the knob and pushed. The door didn't give.

The woman was leaning over the sill, trying to see what he was doing.

"This door is locked," he said.

"Locked!" the woman croaked in amazement. "That door ain't been locked since I lived here, and that's been six years."

"It's locked now. Who has a key?"

Coffin Ed had his pistol out. The long nickel-plated barrel gleamed in the dim light.

"Move over," he said. "I'll blow it open."

"Easy does it," Grave Digger cautioned. "Let's don't risk any noise."

"I got a key," the woman said, groaning as she got from her chair. "But I ain't never used it, and I don't know exactly where it is."

Coffin Ed pushed at the edge of the door. "It ought to break easy enough," he said.

"Take it easy," Grave Digger said tightly. "We don't want to make any graves."

"I found it," the woman called from the window in a stage whisper.

"Give it here," Grave Digger said, leaning over to take it.

"It won't work from the outside," the woman said.

"Then go open it, woman," Grave Digger said savagely. "What's wrong with you?"

They heard her door open softly and padded feet slither across the hall floor. The key was inserted with a slight grating sound, and the rusty bolt creaked as it moved.

They entered the front hall. In the dim light the woman looked about to cave in from exhaustion. The skin of her face had shrunken and turned gray, and lines like spider webs had formed about her eyes, which were as red as live coals.

"I been watching just like you told me," she croaked.

Neither of them answered. With drawn pistols they started up the stairs, taking them three at a time, Grave Digger leading and Coffin Ed at his heels. Their pistols swung in gleaming arcs like the swords of warriors of old.

At the top, they slowed down and moved cautiously. Making as little sound as possible, they bent, their heads together, and listened at the panel of Alberta's door. They did not hear a sound.

Coffin Ed took out his pocket flashlight and held it in his free hand. Grave Digger gripped the knob, tightened it with a slow pull, turned it silently and pushed. The door didn't budge. He took out his own flashlight.

They looked at one another. Grave Digger nodded. They drew back, angled their shoulders and hit the door simultaneously.

The lock broke, and the door was flung back to the wall. They went through the opening side by side and leaped far apart. Their flashlights raked the darkness; their pistols swung in arcs.

The room was empty. The door to the bedroom was closed. In the next flat a man laughed and a woman's voice was heard distinctly through the thin wall: "I tole him his eyes may shine and his teeth may grit…" From below, the bass notes from a jazz recording came up through the floor as though someone were hammering on the ceiling with the meaty part of their fist.

They crossed the room on tiptoe and flung open the bedroom door. The drawn shade rustled suddenly in the current of air from the open window, and the muzzles of their pistols leveled in that direction at the height of a man's heart.

The room was empty. They released their breath in a soft sigh and looked at each other again.

"Where do we go from here?" Coffin Ed asked.

Grave Digger nodded toward the kitchen door.

They crossed the room, and Grave Digger opened the door without caution. Their lights focused suddenly on a body lying on the floor.

"Too late," Grave Digger said in a thick, cottony voice. "Too late," he repeated bitterly.

"Maybe not," Coffin Ed said.

She lay doubled up on her side on the linoleum floor. She still wore the same uniform in which she had been baptized, but now it was black with dirt. Her hands were tied behind her with a cotton clothesline, which had been run down between her feet and wrapped about her ankles. Her feet had been drawn up to the level of her hands. She was gagged with a yellow bath towel, which was knotted at the back of her head. There was a large red stain on the underside, where blood had soaked into it from the corner of her mouth. Blood, seeping slowly from her greasy matted hair, came from a wound in the top of her head. Her eyes were closed, and her face looked peaceful. She looked like she was asleep.

Coffin Ed switched on the overhead light, and both detectives holstered their pistols. Grave Digger knelt beside the body and felt for the pulse. Coffin Ed unknotted the gag. She moaned suddenly when the gag was removed and swallowed her tongue. Coffin Ed reached two fingers down her throat and pulled it up, and blood that had collected there poured from her mouth. Grave Digger found a serving spoon in the cupboard drawer and bent the handle to form a hook. Coffin Ed eased his fingers from her mouth while Grave Digger inserted the spoon to hold her tongue in place and hooked the handle over her upper lip.

They found two small burns on each side of her mouth. There were cigarette butts and the stems of burned paper matches on the floor.

"I'll go and call for the ambulance," Coffin Ed said, whispering.

"No need for silence now," Grave Digger said.

He heard Coffin Ed thundering down the stairs as he cut the cotton rope binding her hands and feet and gently straightened out her legs. He found more of the small round burns on the back of her hand. His neck was swollen and corded until the flesh bulged over his collar, and he seemed to have difficulty with his breathing. He lifted her head slightly and inserted a flat pan under her so that it lay level. He didn't turn her over. He didn't touch the wound.

He poked at the cigarette butts with his fingertip. One was the butt of a marijuana cigarette. He didn't bother to pick them up. Finally he got to his feet and looked around, but there was nothing to see.

Coffin Ed returned.

"They're rushing an ambulance from Harlem Hospital," he said, then after a moment added, "Anderson said he'd telephone the Homicide Bureau to see what they wanted done."

"They didn't get anything out of her, so they knocked her in the head," Grave Digger said in a thick, cottony voice.

"They must have had a lookout staked and saw us coming," Coffin Ed surmised.

"I don't dig this business," Grave Digger admitted.

While waiting for the ambulance, they went over the apartment briefly. They saw the signs where Sugar had searched, but nothing to indicate that money had been hidden there. They raised the shade, went out through the bedroom window and climbed the fire escape to the roof. They saw nothing that told them anything. It was easy enough to get down to the street in a dozen places from the flat, adjoining roofs on both 118th and 119th Streets.

"Poking around like this is the long way," Grave Digger said.

"Then it might not lead anywhere," Coffin Ed agreed.

They went back into the kitchen and looked at the woman on the floor.

"Either Slick and his muscle boy, or Dummy alone, or all three together," Coffin Ed said. "Or else somebody we don't know about."

Grave Digger didn't reply.

The sound of a siren came through the night.

"If they were hanging around, they're gone now," Coffin Ed said.

Nothing more was said.

They heard the ambulance draw to a stop down on the street. Steps sounded on the stairs. Two white-clad colored interns came briskly through the front room, one carrying an instrument case. They were followed by a uniformed white driver carrying a rolled-up canvas stretcher.

The interns glanced once at the detectives, then knelt beside the woman and made a quick, cursory examination without opening the instrument case. One pressed the skull gently beside the wound. Alberta moaned.

"Is it bad?" Coffin Ed asked.

"Can't say with concussion," the intern replied without looking up. "Only the X rays will tell. Stretcher," he said to the driver.

The driver unrolled the stretcher and laid it on the floor parallel to the body, and the interns worked the edge underneath her side. Then, while one intern held her head, the driver and the other intern rolled her over gently on her back onto the stretcher.

"You want something?" the intern asked Coffin Ed.

"Just get her to talk," Grave Digger said in his thick, cottony voice.

"Talking is not good for a concussion case," the intern said.

"Good or not," Grave Digger said brutally.

All three of the ambulance crew looked at him.

The first intern said dispassionately, "All you cops are heartless bastards."

Grave Digger let out his breath. "It's hard to say who's heartless and who isn't," he said. "There's a woman hurt, and there's a killer loose. She can tell us who he is before someone else gets it."

No one answered him.

The driver and one of the interns picked up the stretcher and the other intern, carrying the instrument cases led the way out. The detectives followed.

With the arrival of the ambulance, the tenement had come alive. Tenants crowded into the hallways and peered from open doors.

"Get back into your holes and thank God it isn't you," Coffin Ed said to a group of them.

The window-watcher was waiting in her doorway. Her red eyes peered from a gray face, on which there was a look of consternation.

"I don't see how she could have got in without me seeing her," she said, clutching at Grave Digger's sleeve. "I hardly left the window at all."

He shook her off and passed without replying.

The ambulance was rolling when they got into their car.

"I got a hunch we're just getting started on this thing," Grave Digger said as he unhooked the radio telephone and dialed the precinct station.

"We're going uptown to Five Fifty-five Edgecombe Drive, Slick Jenkins' apartment," he told Lieutenant Anderson. "If anything comes in, you know where to reach us."

"No, wait where you are for the sergeant from Homicide," Anderson directed. "He wants to work this out."

"There isn't time," Grave Digger said.

"Wait anyway," Anderson ordered.

Grave Digger cradled the telephone and started the motor.

"Heartless," he repeated to himself as though it worried him.